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Friday, January 30, 2015

Edcite - Create Online Assessment Opportunities for Your Students

With SBAC on the horizon the stress level is high on teachers who have concerns about giving the students testing scenarios that model the tech skills they will need to be successful with the new tests. Edcite is a great solution for this.

There are multiple ways of using this resource. The simplest is to reuse or modify an already created assignment from the site which are easily found using filters and search terms based on topics, CCSS, and/or grade level. Once saving the assignment to your own personal library you can quickly send out an assignment through a URL to students to take and gather data on. Students will not need an edcite account to utilize the site this way. Students must finish the assignment in one sitting in this scenario.

The second scenario is to create a class and assign username and passwords to the students. The benefit of this is having the ability to quickly assign and have the assignment appear in the students' accounts. It also would allow for a student to start an assignment, leave for the day, and then relog into the assignment and finish at a later time.

Both ways will track data for the teacher that gives the assignment. Assignments are automatically graded outside of the open ended, which the teacher will go in and self grade. Teachers can create their own questions and own assignments aligned with the curriculum that they are working on.

Why do online assessments and assignments? Edcite allows the students to have experiences with the different questioning styles that they will experience in the SBAC. For example, open ended, drag and drop, make a line on a grid, etc... The more online reading and writing opportunities students are given the opportunity to do, the less "lack of tech experience" will impact their performance when they are assessed in the spring. Free and usable from Kinder to 12th grade, this resource is well worth your time!